Robust Parameter Dependent Receding Horizon H∞ Control of Flexible Air‐Breathing Hypersonic Vehicles with Input Constraints

This paper describes the design of a robust parameter dependent receding horizon H controller (PD-RHHC) for a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle (ABHSV) model. Because of the complexity and uncertainty of the model of the vehicle dynamics, few control strategies take constraints into account in the computation of the control law. The objective of the current research is to develop a controller design method that can accommodate input saturation. In this paper, starting from the analytical nonlinear dynamic model with aerothermoelastic mode dynamics, a linear parameter varying (LPV) model is obtained by an improved functional substitution method. Tensor product (TP) model transformation technology is then applied to obtain the polytopic representations of the LPV model. Based on the gain-scheduling method, a novel parameter dependent receding horizon control algorithm by convex optimization solving linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) is presented, which provides stable tracking of the velocity and altitude reference trajectories. The proposed control strategy not only addresses the issue of robustness stability with respect to parametric model uncertainty and aerothermoelastic mode, but also explicitly deals with input constraints and guarantees that the control inputs are within their limits. Finally, the numerical simulation results prove the availability of the proposed method.